Hell是“地狱”，high water是“涨潮”，这个短语是什么意思呢？请看对话：

    A: Don’t forget our appointment.

    B: I’ll be there tomorrow, come hell or high water.

    Note: The idiom means “no matter what happens.” The “high water” most likely refers to flooding of a community by a swollen river, which could, at a minimum, make appointments difficult to keep. But it has also been suggested that the phrase came from the days of cattle drives in the western United States, when fording a river at high water was a risky proposition. In any case, the twist of the phrase comes from the counterposition of “hell,” the locus of absolute evil, with the fairly mundane inconvenience of “high water.” A similar phrase is “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise,” meaning essentially “if all goes well, barring any disaster.”